Thursday, 23 March 2017

McGuinness was not part of my movement

Since the
death of Martin McGuinness on Tuesday my Facebook newsfeed has hardly been
without a picture of him for a minute, many of these pictures are intended to
be glowing tributes and show him looking like a great statesman or a young
radical Republican, many more are pictures of him shaking hands with the British
Queen or standing outside the steps of Stormont with Hugh Orde the RUC Chief as
McGuinness notoriously proclaimed Republicans to be “Traitors to the Island of
Ireland”

It has been
a few days now of the same thing repeated ad nauseam about this man, and a few
days of high emotions in Republican circles as differing accounts of who and
what Martin McGuinness was come to the surface.

How did I
react? I didn’t!

I didn’t make
a conscious effort to ignore the death of the former British Deputy first
minister in Ireland, I just simply felt nothing. As a chatterbox with an opinion on near on
everything, my silence led various
people to privately contact me to ask what my opinion was, when I simply said “ah
it is sad for the family” I think they were a bit deflated.

It got me
thinking today as to why I am not really interested, I can only think it is
because I never actually identified with McGuinness, I was never a part of his
movement, with the Sinn Féin split in 1986 and being born in 1984 I never saw
this man as part of my movement. I was not reared believing he was a Republican
idol, I grew up my whole life seeing the provisional movement and all their
members as “them” and then there was “us”.

I can
empathise with Republicans who were a part of his movement and later left PSF,
many of them older than me who left in 1986 and others who have left in the
intervening years. McGuinness’ death has
thrown up all sorts of feelings and mixed emotions. Many Republicans who
actually worked alongside him or who previously held him in high esteem quite
rightly feel betrayed.

It is worth
noting that when Republicans at varying times left PSF they were not simply to
be left to their own devices, PSF actively tried to suppress the “dissidents”,
this took the form of violence on more than one occasion and these gangs known colloquially
as “Dissident hunters” were brutal. Some
of the documented attacks by these gangs are that of Michael Donnelly from
Derry who was physically assaulted with Iron bars at his home and hospitalised
with a broken leg, Michael’s 10 year old
daughter was also injured in this attack. Another well-known example is that of
Bobby Tohill who was kidnapped from a bar, bundled into the back of a van, severely beaten before being gassed and knocked out, had the van not have been intercepted by the police God knows what would
have happened. There are many many more
incidents related to these gangs, too many to go into.

Some “dissident”
Republicans have decided that in death
McGuinness’ actions can be understood, his character rehabilitated,
others have gave scathing accounts of his life and criticised others as hypocrites
for giving tributes to him in death while they vilified him in life.

When Ian
Paisley died I remember hundreds of vile posts, I have no issue with anyone
critiquing someone’s life, however I don’t like vulgar and crass posts glorifying
the death of anyone, I made a post at the time of Paisley’s death saying that
as Republicans we should hold ourselves to a higher standard and not engage in
such things, this was met with some agreement but with a whole lot of hostility
also. I believe the same about McGuinness, by all means critique him, I have
said many things about him in the past and my views on him have not changed one
iota.

What is for
sure is that Martin McGuinness is gone; his colleagues have claimed he is irreplaceable,
that he was one of a kind, I couldn’t disagree more. Irish History is littered with Martin
McGuinnesses, PSF departing from traditional republican principles and taking
their seats in Leinster House and Stormont is not a new phenomenon, they are
not trail blazers or radical new thinkers, we have seen splitters from the
Republican movement pull this same move before from Fianna Fáil in the 20's to
the stickies in the 70’s.

McGuinness may have been thought of as a great Republican once, fighting for the people of the bogside in his youth, in reality for me what he was was just another in a long line of Nationalist politicians, who had moved from a radical youth to a constitutional politician.

What we
must do as Republicans is to learn from history, including recent history and
not repeat its mistakes, focus on where we are going and not where others have
went wrong.

35 comments:

Well wrote. I'm sure many share this view, and just because we are against celebrating death doesn't mean we are all of a sudden in the Martin Mc Guinness fan club. Dead or alive the man is still a traitor and will be remember as a member of the British establishment

Utter wank. You belong to a lunatic fringe with zero support. I stood with 30,000 others today in Derry to remember and celebrate a true republican and son of Derry. He will be remembered as the man who helped fight the British and their loyalist henchmen to a standstill whilst you squabbled with your micro-group allies. Stop embarrassing yourself any further please.

Well written Cait could not agree more with what u said his supporters will eulogize him but at the end of the day he turned his back on Republicanism and embraced the British establishment and administrated British rule in the Six Counties on their behalf

Good piece. To set up a 'follow' function you need first to set up a MailChimp account. You would then need to link it to your WordPress. You'd probably need an engineer to help you put it all together though. The end result is that when you post a new article you can then mail it out over your MailChimp to a list of people you can put together yourself but which others then have the option of joining. You can also drop out too if you like.

Well done cait. My feelings exactly put into words. I too felt nothing for him or thought of him and watched as some of his detractors appeared at his funeral today, i will never again regard them as Republicans.

Martin McGuinness dead at 66. Condolences to his family and to his former comrades who fought with him against the British Army and the Loyalist death squads.

The former IRA commander accepted the Loyalist veto on a united Ireland, shook the hand of the Queen and sold the lie that the conflict in the north of Ireland was due to the failure to persuade the Loyalists that they should cease to be reactionary supremacists.

The Northern Ireland state is an artificial, illegitimate entity forged by the British Empire in alliance with fascist violence against the nationalist population of Belfast in July 1920, driving some 9,000 of them out of the shipyards and factories with lethal missiles dubbed 'Belfast confetti'.

Their reactionary ideology was defended as a legitimate 'culture' by the British Empire and its Tory representatives, by Labour and the British TUC and by wave after wave of sell out Republican leaderships, Michael Collins in 1922 first, followed by de Valera in 1927, by the Officials/ Workers Party after 1969 and now Adams and McGuinness in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

McGuinness was the crucial leader who secured the GFA acceptance by the IRA of the abandonment of the opposition to British imperialism.

The scale of that political collapse is testified to by the high praise already being heaped on him by BBC Radio 4 just now for the great favour he had done the British Empire in the north. It will be followed by similar nauseating accolades from the champions of the cause of imperialism. Mediated by sheer anti Irish racism from the Sun, Mail and Express that he had ever the temerity to fight them in the first place.

Couldn't agree more Cáit... Over glorified in death, and some shameless political wriggling from Gerry at the graveside. Even using his closest comrades death as another Provisional football... (PS: Nice blog, keep it up, it's been a while!) Longford Davey